Solar-driven Fenton treatment for the removal of antibiotic-related microcontaminants in an urban wastewater effluents

Solar-driven Fenton treatment for the removal of antibiotic-related microcontaminants in an urban wastewater effluents

Water scarcity and water quality deterioration is a major cause of water stress.Irrigation and domestic demands are the main pressures on water resources so there is an active consideration of alternative water resource utilization, including wastewater reuse, but in order to make wastewater a safe and widely applied practice, potential risks towards human health and environmental matrices must be managed.One of these risks is the introduction of antibiotic residues back to the environment thus creating the risk of development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. The solar-Fenton oxidation successfully brakes down all antibiotic residues which were being examined and also bacteria, specifically the E-coli bacterium, resistant to antibiotics and non-resistant.